Mastermind behind US governor kidnapping plot sentenced to over 19 years

In the second of two rulings by the same Federal judge this week, Barry Croft, Jr. was handed a prison sentence of over 19 years on Wednesday in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Judge Robert Jonker sentenced Croft for his role in the attempted kidnapping of Whitmer during the summer of 2020 from her summer residence, according to reporting by The Detroit Free Press. Croft was said to be the ringleader behind the seizure, along with co-conspirator Adam Fox and three other men.

On Tuesday, Fox was handed a sentence of 16 years in Federal prison by Judge Jonker.

Croft, a trucker originally from Delaware, was tried along with Fox in April this year but the jury was deadlocked, causing a retrial in August wherein the two men were found guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and the use of a weapon of mass destruction against the governor.

Despite the prosecution asking Jonker to sentence Croft to life in prison, the judge handed down a sentence of 235 months from the Grand Rapids court. It is the longest time period received for any of the men involved in the plot.

Croft was initially arrested in 2020 at a truck stop in New Jersey a day after his co-conspirators were arrested in an FBI sting in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The arrests were made due to the assistance of one undercover FBI agent who had acted as an explosives dealer.

The kidnapping scheme was planned by individuals and far-right groups rebelling against Whitmer's strict rulings at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in Michigan. The men were said to have practiced detonating explosives in the run-up to the kidnapping attempt (although failing), activity that has been labelled nothing short of a domestic terrorist plot.

Jonker felt Croft's sentence fit the crime. "I agree with (the prosecutor) that the conduct here is serious," he said in a statement. "It is a serious attempt to get to the governor but I don't think it warrants a life sentence."

Assistant US Attorney Nils Kessler however pushed for a life sentence, arguing that the men were engaged in much more than a simple kidnapping plot: It was the beginning of a violent uprising against the government, with their bent on the Constitution along with the taking of a noted public official as the kick-off.

"It wasn't about masks or vaccines … or gun policy," Kessler said. "He's been wanting to do this for a long time … These kinds of charlatans take a sacred document and show it to (others) and say, 'You can kill people and still be a good guy.'"

Kessler added that Croft and his cohorts wanted to blow up a bridge to hinder law enforcement during the attempted kidnapping. "He drove all the way across the country from Delaware and went to a bridge."

Croft's defense attorney Joshua Blanchard called his client a loving father and struggling misfit, whose isolation as a trucker had ended up leading him to make the bad decisions he did.

"I have spent hours listening to recordings of this case … the Barry Croft whom I have come to know is more complex than the person I heard in those recordings," said Blanchard. "He said some awful, horrible things. When I think about how he got here — I believe there is no question that Mr. Croft was isolated before the pandemic. He went way down a conspiracy rabbit hole."